East European Hurdy-Gurdy Music

Engineer – Ferenc Pécsi
Hurdy Gurdy – Róbert Mandel
Producer – Monika Feszler

The hurdy-gurdy came to Eastern Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century and was brought in by Western European travelling musicians, and by the middle of the 20th century it was no longer part of living folk music anywhere. The instrument had no repertoire of its own and bagpipe music, of a similar sound, was usually played on it. These days in Hungary one can bare by meet a hurdy-gurdy player or two of the older generation in the rural farmstead regions of Szentes, Csongrád, Kecskemeét.

The opening piece is a characteristic Central Hungarian hurdy-gurdy music. (These original tunes are performed by József Kiss of Fábiánsebestyén and István Balla of Szentes.) The second and the sixth piece on Side A present an old complete series of dances from Southern Transdanubia. The third piece presents the hurdy-gurdy-clarinet combination which is peculiar to Hungary. 'Two red peonies' is a pairing up tune from Zala County (A/4). Hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes in combination appear only rarely. Palóc bagpipe tunes, and an olibotone peculiar to that region, are featured on this track (A/5).

The sound of the Bulgarian bagpipe, of the gadulka (a peculiar type of string instrument), and of the kaval (a kind of transverse flute) are a perfect match to that of the hurdy-gurdy (B/1). It was also widely used in Poland, and was called lira. The two tunes Oberek and Polka originally intended for the leather bagpipe (kozioł) (B/2). In the Ukranie, in the Soviet Union, they called the hurdy-gurdy relya and beggars used it to accompany their songs (B/3). In Rumania, the hurdy-gurdy was known as lira or viella mecanica in the last century. It is likely that the repertoire was the same as that of the leather bagpipe called cimpoi.'